I actually wrote this one 2 months ago and was struggling with how to close the poem. Finally managed to wrap it up and found the motivation to update my poetry blog.

If you grew up in Bushwick in the 90’s/2000’s, then some of this may be familiar. When I think of my childhood, I think of all the Spanish speaking residents in the neighborhood, and the sounds of the language, the music. I think of summer bringing everyone outside to the streets, on the stoops, playing dominos, buying from the pidaqua stands and dancing. Sure, there were some dangerous sides to the neighborhood as well, but the culture was really something before gentrification swept in. I’ll never forget it…

Like this:

I discovered the #VSS365 hash tag on Twitter recently, and I’ve started to participate in it. It’s been a lot of fun. I’d like to keep track of them from now on, on a monthly basis. Since I’ve only just started, here are the few I wrote for January. Enjoy.

If red is anger, passion, hunger – and #pink is born from red,when did pink become soft? How did pink become baby blankies and tween love?

A cold silence thickened the air. Her car radio, flickered across stations in a garbled frenzy, inciting panic until it froze. "#London bridges falling down," came the eerie nursery rhyme & it was then that Gina's heart dropped. *It* had followed her home. #vss365#ghostStories

A fog rolled in all around them, the kids clinging helplessly to each other. In the darkness, a bone-chilling #pantomime sang in whispers. "What was that?" Jason squeaked. Just as Oscar was about to charge, painted faces floated up from the trees. Oscar fainted instead. #VSS365

A ruined city behind us, Mickey was in oblivious #bliss as he thrust his head out of the car window. The wind boxing his ears, and his tongue flailing out of his cheek, judging by our dog, no one would guess we were running. No one would guess that the world was ending. #vss365

While I still struggle with depression and anxiety on and off in my life, there was a time that it was so deep, the train tracks tempted me daily. Clearly, I never gave in. However, it’s something powerful enough, that I wanted to write about it. If you have thoughts of suicide, please seek help. Please know someone out there loves you.

It’s all the elderly women and their middle aged clones sitting between shopping bags on the train.

It’s buying flowers every 20th because the petals feel like the tops of her tender hands.

It’s not knowing who to put in my emergency contacts now.

It’s not having someone to ask if these shoes match with this shirt.

It’s realizing my life was on training wheels the whole time I thought I was adulting.

It’s realizing that “You are my sunshine” is the saddest song ever created.

It’s having to keep family drama to myself.

It’s not knowing whether to bundle up unless I actually look up the weather.

It’s sleeping all the time because dreams are the only way to see her.

It’s chronologically organizing and filing day every card she’s ever given to me.

It’s caring for an oversized pair of pajamas the way a museum conservator does artifacts.

It’s not having a partner the night before Thanksgiving who knows how to tuck in the turkey wings.

It’s buying nothing with her name, for Christmas, mother’s day, or her birthday – ever again.

It’s being truly homesick, because home is where the heart is and my mom, was my heart.

It’s crying at the live action trailer of Dumbo, because damn those bastards who take his mommy. Heaven forbid Disney decides to reboot Bambi next.

It’s her number in my favorites, that I refuse to delete, because she is still my favorite person to talk to.

It’s never being able to talk to my favorite person again and when the cold turkey becomes unbearable, it’s stalking her Facebook feed, memorizing text message threads and writing her in messenger despite that it’s the same as writing to myself.

It’s writing her into a Christmas card for my dad because I’ll be damned if I have to refer to my parents as anything other than a pair – two halves of a whole.

It’s having a dream where she isn’t really gone, and it was all a trick, because she is here – in the flesh, and I’ve never known true happiness until that moment.

It’s waking up at one in the morning and realizing she died all over again, and real life, is the nightmare.

It’s knowing my life will always be “the before” and “the after”.

And most of all, it’s knowing I will never bask in the unconditional, effortless love, that is my mother’s.

I don’t think many people realize, until they’ve lost someone so integrated into their lives, what having that person gone is like. It affects so many things, it’s this gaping hole in your life, that you are forced to live with. To learn to live with.

Some things have “work arounds”, like youtubing a video about something I could’ve asked my mom about. The 2 years before she passed, she taught me how to make pasteles from scratch and we made them together for the holidays. This past holiday, I stood in the supermarket feeling completely bewildered, because I didn’t know the difference between yautia – white or yellow – and malanga. I think if I didn’t have the internet on my phone to help, I wouldn’t have tried making pasteles without her again.

For other things, like the urge to call her, it doesn’t go away. It’s almost been a year and even today, without thinking, I thought, “I should call my mom,” and then to realize, “Oh wait. Yeah…”

Running errands have become quieter for me. Either she kept me company or I called her on the phone to catch up. I like to talk to people when I cook dinner, and she was one of the people I called most. Now there are times I cook in silence, and my husband asks me, why aren’t I talking to anyone? Because sometimes calling someone different makes it feel a bit better, other times, nothing can replace talking to her so I choose to talk to no one at all. There, in the emptiness of a phone call and conversation that could’ve have been – had it not been for cancer.

It sucks. Still trying to find ways to cope. Writing is one way. Taking it day by day.

I wrote this the weekend before mama’s birthday on May 8th. Her first birthday without her. I saw a movie with the in-laws the Sunday before and as we were driving home, I couldn’t help, but be in awe of all the flowers in the trees – it was beautiful. I started writing this – hoping that wherever my mama is, that it was a place full of flowers. I bring flowers home every 20th, she passed on Feb. 20th, and for me, the flowers connect us. Her name is Rosalina, Rosa, like the flower. She loved flowers, and by keeping flowers close to me, I hope that in some way, she’s just as close.

I wrote this in February within the weeks my mother was becoming less like herself. By then she was in a nursing home, intubated via tracheotomy, and Pleurx catheters in her lungs and stomach. Although she survived a bout of pneumonia in December and January appeared hopeful, as February rolled in, I noticed she was sleeping more, becoming less focused, and forgetting things you told her minutes before. The cancer was progressing fast. A church friend of hers sat with me and said it reminded her of her father, who, like a candle, dimmed each day until he wasn’t there anymore. I wrote this praying that if I could not keep her, that God at least take her peacefully, without pain.